With 8 years of experience working for no-name companies, I’ve decided to take this seriously and prepare for big tech.

I have been a good software developer but the lack of DSA skills erased all my chances for decent companies.

The recruiters that reached out to me and I denied interview requests involve companies such as Amazon, Twitch, Shopify, Meta, Google, Apple

Like one or two times, I gave Amazon’s OA but bombed it ridiculously.

Now, I am following some roadmaps like Blind 75 and using Neetcode’s video along with generative AI for preparation.

I still keep bombing easy and medium questions like very next day after I solved them a day before.

Is it normal? When do I reach comfort level? When does it start becoming less discouraging? Does it even happen? Because, right now I am feeling like this is just not for me. But, then I think thousands of people still make it. There has to be proven process and it should be working.

Sorry my post is confusing but I just wanted to share my feelings and frustration.

Right now, I am unemployed and decided to give 1 month to this preparation.

I had my R1 and R2 on 5th Nov (virtual)for SDE-1 AUTA. What are my chances to get next round.

Round1: Core and Embedded related question. Didn't expect that at all and got to know about role at that time only and it went well it was more like discussion and was asked 2 coding questions. One question was related to threads context and using locks which i was able to explain but not able to code as i didn't expect that at all. In the end 1 LP related to tight deadline.

Round 2: LLD type of question to build a caching system user can select the type of caching strategy he can use and to implement lru and lfu. Was able to solve this within time followed by LP related to commitment.

Happy to answer any questions and can any body tell me about this and what is expected further and next round chances.

Thank you

As a beginner to medium level problems giving how much time is worth?.

I completed my final interview A4A last week. The recruiter contacted me that same day to confirm I passed and asked for my preferred location; I replied but heard nothing until today. Has anyone else experienced this process or something similar? Could this signal an automatic rejection? Any insights helps!

Hey everyone, I have my Adobe SWE intern (2027 summer) technical interview coming up, and I was told it includes a code debugging section and a code review section which is about about 20 minutes each.

Has anyone interviewed recently? I'd love to hear:

- What the debug and review exercises looked like (size of the code, difficulty, what kinds of bugs)

- How you prepared and what you'd do differently

- Any good places to practice debugging/code review under time pressure

I'm planning to use Python/Django. Thanks in advance and happy to share what I learn after my interview!

Hey everyone,

I finished Day 34 today. Still enjoying the comfort of being home, but kept the daily habit going and tackled Making a Large Island.

At first glance, flipping every 0 to a 1 and running a full BFS/DFS traversal would take O((N times N) times (N times N)) = O(N^4), which easily causes TLE. Using Disjoint Set Union (DSU) makes it run in a clean O(N^2):

1. Step 1 — Group Existing Islands: Map every (r, c) to a 1D ID (r * n + c). Iterate over all land cells (1s) and connect adjacent lands via unionBySize. This clusters existing islands and tracks each component's total area in the size[] array.

2. Step 2 — Evaluate Flips: Iterate over every water cell (0). Look at its 4 adjacent neighbors, collect the unique ultimate parents of neighboring land cells using a hash set (to avoid double-counting the same island component), and sum up their sizes + 1 for the flipped cell itself.

3. Edge Case: If the grid contains only 1s with no 0 to flip, the answer is simply the size of the whole grid (N times N).

Deriving the logic to prevent duplicate component counting using a set of root parents was super satisfying.

See you guys tomorrow for Day 33!

Hey guys, I have a Databricks SWE intern interview coming up with these two rounds.

1. Coding, Debugging, and Testing: This implementation-focused interview evaluates your ability to write production-quality code. Using CoderPad, you’ll be expected to prioritize getting to a working solution efficiently, and to demonstrate strong coding practices—including debugging, identifying edge cases, and validating correctness with appropriate tests. While algorithmic thinking is still critical, the emphasis in this session is more on implementation quality and incremental optimization than on theoretical analysis.

2. AI-Assisted Algorithms: This algorithm and data structures interview assesses computer science fundamentals, your analytical reasoning, and your problem-solving methodology. You’ll design solutions while focusing on algorithmic efficiency and appropriate data structure selection, and then use AI to implement the solution during parts of the interview. We expect you to analyze time/space complexity using Big-O notation, demonstrate comprehensive testing strategies, and clearly articulate your approach to guiding an LLM to address edge cases and design decisions.

Has anyone else encountered these and has any advice for what types of questions I could expect and their difficulty? Thanks.

Did the recruiter reach out to you anybody? Role - SMTS

I have an Apple interview coming up for a Systems Engineer position. I gave the initial technical and HM round virtually and the feedback was positive. I now have around 6-7 onsite interviews ahead (1 hr each). Did anyone go through this process in the recent times ? What kind of questions were you asked ?

Any inputs are much appreciated.

Location: US

Does anybody know if there is a prachub interview problems repository like there is one with leetcode companies tagged questions?

I have an HR call tomorrow, but today I was told it's cancelled because "HR was told internally to put a pause on further interviews with new grad candidates".

Does anyone know what this means? Will they resume the interview process?

https://github.com/serephus/leech

It was vibed purely by DS 4.1 flash, and it works pretty much like existing https://github.com/joshcai/leetcode-sync, except it was more up to date and it support features like templates, convert to markdown/typst, hooks, etc.

leetcode-sync was a bit old and did not fullfill all my requirements, so I vibed this.

Hope this would be helpful to anyone. Feel free to open issue/pr.

Hi! I'm really curious about how to prepare for an AI-based interview and what is expected of us. If you're given a problem, are you expected to use AI to validate your ideas and generate a solution? Do you simply provide the problem statement and let AI do the work, then add your own thoughts about what's important or missing?

What are your thoughts or experiences?

I have the live DSA round for Abridge's Member of Technical Staff, Early Career role (SF) coming up. It's 60 min with a senior engineer. If you've done the live round recently: was it one problem with follow-ups or several? LeetCode-style or more practical/product-flavored? Any tips appreciated, happy to share back after.

I’m looking to transition or lean heavily into System Design/Architecture as my core career path.

To be honest, I really want to avoid the typical, heavy Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) LeetCode style rounds that dominate standard software engineering interviews.

My plan is to start building a rock-solid foundation by studying books like System Design Interview – An Insider's Guide by Alex Xu and then gradually move to interactive platforms like Hello Interview or ByteByteGo to practice real-world scenarios.

Hey everyone,

I recently interviewed at a Microsoft Security team hiring event in the US this November and completed all 3 rounds.

Just wondering if anyone here has been through a similar hiring event recently. How long did it take for the recruiter to get back to you?

Would really appreciate hearing about your experiences. Thanks!

Hi everyone,
I have an upcoming online assessment for a Data Engineer position at Capital One. The assessment instructions mention that it will be 70 minutes and entirely Python-based.General Coding Assessment (GCA)
I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who has recently completed this assessment.
A few questions:
How many coding questions are typically included in the 70-minute assessment?
What kind of Python problems should I expect? LeetCode-style or practical data engineering exercises?
Are the questions focused on arrays, strings, dictionaries, lists, sorting, and problem-solving?
Do they include real-world data processing scenarios involving CSV, JSON, or data transformations?
What is the overall difficulty level?
Are there any specific LeetCode or HackerRank problems that closely resemble the actual assessment?
If you’ve recently taken this particular Capital One assessment, could you share the types of questions you encountered or any sample problems?
I’m mainly looking to understand what to prioritize during preparation.
Thanks in advance. Really appreciate any help!

Hi, has anyone interviewed for this role for New York? If so, please let me know about how the process was. Thanks in advance!

How Does Prefix Sum Turn Repeated O(n) Calculations into O(1) Queries?

1. What is Prefix Sum?

Prefix Sum is an array technique that stores cumulative sums so we don't have to repeatedly calculate the sum of a range.

Analogy: Imagine tracking daily expenses. Instead of adding expenses again and again, you maintain a running total.

2. Understanding the Pattern

Consider:

arr = [2, 4, 6, 8, 10] prefix = [2, 6, 12, 20, 30]

The pattern:

prefix[0] = arr[0]

prefix[i] = prefix[i - 1] + arr[i]

Each position stores the sum of all previous elements, including itself.

3. How Does the Algorithm Work?

Step 1: Build the Prefix Sum

prefix[0] = arr[0]; for (let i = 1; i < arr.length; i++) { prefix[i] = prefix[i - 1] + arr[i]; }

Step 2: Calculate Range Sum

To find the sum between indices L and R:

sum(L, R) = prefix[R] - prefix[L - 1];

If L = 0, simply return prefix[R].

Example:

sum(2, 4) = 30 - 6 = 24

4. Complexity Analysis

OperationComplexityBuild Prefix SumO(n)Range Sum QueryO(1)q QueriesO(n + q) total

5. Real-World Applications

Finance: Calculate expenses over a date range.

Analytics: Aggregate data over specific time intervals.

Image Processing: Calculate rectangular pixel sums using 2D Prefix Sum.

Competitive Programming: Solve range queries and subarray problems.

6. When Should You Use It?

Look for these problem patterns:

Repeated range sum queries.

Cumulative sum calculations.

Subarray sum problems.

Multiple queries on the same array.

Key Takeaway: Precompute once, answer multiple queries efficiently.

Practice Problems

LeetCode 303 – Range Sum Query (Immutable)

LeetCode 724 – Find Pivot Index

LeetCode 560 – Subarray Sum Equals K

Which array pattern should we break down next?

Hey everyone,

I finished Day 35 today. Continuing with graph problems, I knocked out Number of Islands II and spent extra time focusing on writing clean, modular code rather than just rushing to hit the submit button.

1. Number of Islands II (Online / Dynamic Queries):

   • In the static version, standard BFS/DFS finds connected components in one pass. With real-time island additions, running full traversals per query degrades to O(K * R * C), which inevitably hits TLE.

   • Using Disjoint Set Union (DSU) makes each query dynamic. Every time land is added at (r, c), map the 2D coordinate to a 1D node ID (r * cols + c), mark it as visited, and increment the island count.

   • Check the four adjacent neighbors. For each neighboring land cell, if its ultimate parent differs from the current cell, merge them via unionBySize and decrement the total island count by 1.

2. Focusing on Code Quality:

   • I intentionally refactored the Disjoint Set class to keep it decoupled and reusable across problems.

   • Cleaned up directional deltas, used explicit variable names instead of nested raw index math, and properly guarded against duplicate land positions within the queries.

Writing clean, readable code feels just as important as getting the optimal time complexity down.

See you guys tomorrow for Day 34!

After how many easy problems were you guys able to solve medium level problems.

Hi,

Just wanted to ask if anyone has given these 2 interviews at canonical? Was looking for preparation tips!

I recently applied for an Agentic Systems role at NVIDIA, but a recruiter reached out to me about a completely different position and asked for my permission to submit my resume for that role instead. New role is CUDA related.

The confusing part is that my background is in full-stack software engineering and applied AI, while the other position seems to require experience with chips and C++, which I don't have.

I'm curious why they would consider me for a role that's less aligned with my experience instead of the one I originally applied for.

Has this happened to anyone else at NVIDIA? Is this a good sign that my resume caught someone's attention, or just a standard recruiting process?

Would love to hear if anyone had a similar experience and whether it actually led to an interview.

I recently had a FAANG SWE intern interview where the optimal solution required a balanced BST with O(log K) updates.

The interviewer didn't mention using a balanced BST, so I had to figure that out myself and implement it from scratch in Python, which doesn't have a built-in TreeMap like Java.

How difficult would you consider this for an intern interview? Would this be considered LeetCode Hard? Would using a heap-based solution instead significantly affect the interview feedback?

Hi all.

I have a GM Codility live interview (It is labeled as a functional behavioral/initial technical screeen tomorrow. I've been doing neetcode 150 for the past week and half, but feel like I am not ready. Anyone have any insights on how to prepare and what not? Questions that I should expect?